Womanizer (A Standalone Novel) (A Steamy Alpha Billionaire Romance) (20 page)

Chapter 31

For the first night in many, I finally got a good night sleep. I was
exhausted by the last few days and the sleep was so appreciated. The adrenaline
rush from the warehouse had worn off and my body was finally able to slip off
into dream land without the need to worry all night long. My anxiety over all
the events that were going on was finally beat by exhaustion.

Typically the only time I went days without sleep was when I lost money
on stocks. I had never been so consumed by researching a company, or by its
CEO, as I was with ALL Warren. If the CEO had not been Alicia, I likely
wouldn’t have invested in the company at all and instead would have just
ignored the IPO all together.

I wasn’t the kind of guy that would waste my time on a company that
didn’t look good. I certainly wasn’t use to putting the kind of effort into
something like I had been doing with Alicia. This was all out of my comfort
zone.

Alicia was the only reason I had gotten involved so far into the company.
Now that I was in so deep, I needed to see if Alicia was part of it or not. I
still held out hope that she had nothing to do with any of the illegal stuff
that was obviously going on. Although, that hope was getting dimmer and dimmer
the more information I found.

I decided to call Mike before I got to work and had him meet me over at
the gym. I needed a workout and so did he. Mike never worked out unless I
specifically called him or his wife forced him to go on a bike ride.

I liked having someone to work out with, well someone like Mike to
workout with. He was quiet and we could just workout without the constant need
to talk during the workout. I wasn’t the type of person who enjoyed idle chit
chat. My life was just too busy for it and I didn’t see the need to waste my
energy on talking if there was no purpose of it.

As Mike and I ran on the treadmills, I explain to him everything that I
had seen at the warehouse. He wasn’t shocked at all. He was quiet and let me
finish telling the story before he started to judge me.

“I knew something was up with that company, Evan. You’re just too close,
you couldn’t see it.”

“You’re right. I am close and that’s why I need to figure out how much
Alicia knows about this all. I care about her. I don’t want her to be in
trouble when this all comes out.”

“Evan, she knows about it. There is no way she is the CEO of the company
and she doesn’t know about all this that is going on. Get your head out of your
ass.”

“Mike, I don’t know if she knows about it or not. This Bill guy could
really be pulling the wool over her eyes.”

“Oh, God! Evan this is exactly why you shouldn’t be involved with the CEO
of a company. You’re blinded by her tits and ass.”

“Fuck you, Mike,” I said lovingly.

We were friends; I knew he could take it.

One time we were working out and Mike had told me to fuck off at least a
dozen times. We were in a heated debate about women and anal sex and my opinion
was that he should get his wife to do it more often. We were just joking with
either other but a waitress had told the restaurant manager who came over and
asked Mike if I was bothering him. He replied, “Yes,” and the manager asked me
to leave the restaurant. It was hilarious.

“I’m just being honest with you. If it looks like a criminal, it’s
usually a criminal. There is just too many facts that point to her knowing
what’s going on.”

I wasn’t so sure there were all the same facts that Mike thought there
were. In my head, things were still very much unknown and I had to have some
sort of finality in order to cut off my relationship with Alicia. I needed her
to admit something was going on or I needed to find evidence that she didn’t
know what was going on. But I couldn’t sit in limbo land any longer.

“I know you’re just trying to look out for me.”

“Let’s call Rebecca and see what she thinks,” Mike said as we finished
our workout.

Panic set in instantly and I didn’t want Rebecca anywhere near me, or my
hands. She was getting a little too much to handle in the bedroom and I needed
to cool things down as soon as possible.

“Um, I think we got things figured out. The two of us can go through this
human resources file I have.”

“I’d feel better if Rebecca sat in with us, I’ll text her and have her
meet in your office.”

Before I could stop him, Mike had already sent something to Rebecca.

My stomach churned as I thought about how Rebecca had chomped down on my
hand. Something about her had started to scare me that was for sure. At least
Mike would be with me, so I should be safe for our conversation.

We made our way to my office and cleared the conference table off. When
Rebecca arrived we all pulled out the research we had and put it onto the table
so we could go over everything and get our facts straight.

The files I had ordered were all there, plus Rebecca’s files, and I added
the human resource file I took from the warehouse. We should have had enough
information to figure out what was going on, but when you are stabbing in the
dark there is a lot of room to make mistakes.

We didn’t really know what we were looking for and there were so many
different people who could be hurting Alicia’s company. Even if we narrowed in
on Bill Yobi, we couldn’t find everything we needed to find on him to prove he
was involved in something sinister.

I was overwhelmed before we even got started. I wanted to just leave the
room and let Mike and Rebecca figure out what was going on. My mind just
couldn’t get wrapped around all the nooks and crannies of information. If it
had been stock information, I would have had no problem, but the financial
information of a company that I didn’t know very well, that was overwhelming to
me.

I was lucky to have both Mike and Rebecca willing to give up their day
and help me get to the bottom of my research. They were both much more detail
oriented than I was and could see things from a different angle than I saw
things. My focus was always on the hard numbers and Mike did great at the big
picture.

We all started going to through files and taking notes. Rebecca was
vigorously writing and pillaging through page after page of material. I half
wanted to just sit back and let her finish going through everything. She
without doubt was an efficient researcher.

“Bill Yobi isn’t on any of these payroll sheets. I mean they are from a
year ago and not the most current ones; but still he should be on them,”
Rebecca said to break the silence.

“Well didn’t we already decide that there were probably hundreds of
people not on the payroll sheets? Maybe there are other sheets?” I suggested.

“No, there can’t be other sheets. That’s illegal. They need to all be
together.”

I sat still and pondered what exactly she said. If they didn’t have
everyone on these payroll sheets they could make it look like there were making
a lot more money than they actually were. But the thing that confused me was
that they actually did have tons of money. I had seen it in the warehouse.

“I still don’t get what’s going on,” Mike said as he looked at both of
us.

“It’s money laundering, Mike. That’s what’s going on here,” Rebecca said.

I didn’t know the specifics yet, but I definitely could tell they were
hiding their money from people. Their books were not how they were supposed to
be. Their payroll wasn’t either. Nothing about ALL Warren Clothing seemed
legitimate at all. I needed to talk to Alicia. But I had no idea what I was
going to say to her.

She could either be in on everything, or she could know nothing. I didn’t
know which was true, but I was getting closer.

“So, guys, I need to try and get some information out of Alicia. How can
I do that?” I asked them.

“You need to see how she reacts when you bring some of this up. Her
reaction will be key to knowing how much she knows about it all.”

“You’re right, Rebecca. If she gets defensive then she probably knows
everything. If she gets pissed off she might not know anything at all,” Mike
added.

“The problem is, I don’t see how I can bring it up without totally
letting the cat out of the bag. If she knows I have been investigating her and
her company she’s going to be so pissed.”

All I could think about was that I actually cared about Alicia. Of
course, I didn’t want to lose thousands of dollars if her company went bust.
But more than that, I had something special with her that I hadn’t had with
another woman in a very long time. I didn’t want to fuck that up.

Honestly, I didn’t want to fuck it up until I had fucked her at least.
After weeks of dates, flirting and kissing I really needed to be with her. I
had to see if our connection was just some weird flirting thing or if we
actually had a real connections.

“Darla text me and invited me to a dinner party, maybe I should take
Alicia. Try and throw out there some stuff I heard about Bill Yobi and see what
she has to say?” I wasn’t confident at all that it was a good plan.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t go too far into things though. Maybe start with some facts
you heard about the previous company they worked together at. Talk about some
of the news stories you saw. See how she is reacting. It’s the past and public
she shouldn’t get all that upset about it. Especially if she didn’t have
anything to do with it.”

Mike was always great at thinking things through, it was one of the
reasons we got along so well. He had an innate ability to bring me into focus
and I loved that. We always joked that someday we would start our own
investment firm, but that he would have to get 60% and me 40% because he worked
more efficiently than I did.

“Sounds good, Mike, thanks,” I said as we wrapped up our review session.

I started to put the files away and noticed that Mike was getting up to
leave but Rebecca was still sitting. There was no way I wanted to be left alone
with her again.

“Thanks for coming to help, Rebecca, I really appreciate it,” I said in
hopes of getting her going.

She just sat there.

I looked at Mike briefly as he left the room and hoped he would offer some
sort of help to me, but he didn’t. He just smiled at me and then kept walking.
Mike obviously didn’t understand how badly I didn’t want to be left alone with
Rebecca.

Although she had behaved perfectly fine when in the room with Mike and I,
I feared she wasn’t going to be so sweet if it was just the two of us. I looked
to the door and then back at Rebecca. There was no way I was staying alone with
her in that room. I had to figure out a way to get out of there. A way to leave
without her following me and without her knowing I was purposely trying to
avoid her.

“I’ll help you clean up,” Rebecca said as she moved toward me.

“Aww, that’s alright; I’ve got it. Thank you, though. I need to run and
ask Mike one last thing. I’ll talk to you later.”

I ran off after Mike like a teenager avoiding a girl who liked him. It
got even more obvious when I hid in Mike’s office and watched for Rebecca to
leave down the hallway. I looked out his cracked door and then would close it
again. I closed the blinds to the tiny window by the door and stood there and
breathed heavily while I waited for Rebecca to leave my office and go back to
her own desk.

“What are you doing?” Mike asked.

“I can’t be alone with her; she’s dangerous,” I said as I peered out the
door.

“Oh, yeah. The sweetest woman in the office is dangerous?”

I just held up my hand and showed it to him. He hadn’t asked me what had
happened to it yet; probably just assumed it was some stupid accident or
something. I had been injured by women before. Sometimes while we were trying
to do some fun sex move, but not typically by them purposely hurting me.

“She bit me.”

“What? Did you say she bit you?” Mike laughed.

“Yes, and it hurt.”

“So was she mad when she bit you? What exactly was going on when this biting
happened? Were you two fucking?”

I turned around and looked down at the ground like a child about to be
scolded by his father. Mike knew from the look on my face that the answer was
yes. I had indeed been fucking Rebecca.

“Yes.”

“Way to go Evan. Now you have flipped the nicest girl in the office into
some sort of fatal attraction.”

“I don’t think it’s like that. Well, I don’t know. She said it was an
accident. She bit me when my hand was over her mouth when she orgasmed.”

Mike just laughed and went back to his work. I could tell he didn’t want
to hear any more of my stories. Mike had been privy to pretty much every sex
story I had ever had. Not because I wanted to share them with him, but
typically he asked me about things.

He had heard about the woman who tied me up and then passed out, so I was
left tied up until the next morning. Mike had laughed hysterically at the woman
who had convinced me to have sex in a movie theater and then we got kicked out
and banned from there forever. Still to this day I am allowed back into the
theater on Thirtieth Street. Mike had heard it all before and he just shook his
head.